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In a time of dazzling scientific progress, how can we separate genuine breakthroughs from the noisy gaggle of false claims? From Deepak Chopra's "quantum alternative to growing old" to unwarranted hype surrounding the International Space Station, Robert Park leads us down the back alleys of fringe science, through the gleaming corridors of Washington power and even into our evolutionary past to search out the origins of voodoo science. Along the way, he offers simple and engaging science lessons, proving that you don't have to be a scientist to spot the fraudulent science that swirls around us.
While remaining highly humorous, this hard-hitting account also tallies the cost: the billions spent on worthless therapies, the tax dollars squandered on government projects that are doomed to fail, the investors bilked by schemes that violate the most fundamental laws of nature. But the greatest cost is human: fear of imaginary dangers, reliance on magical cures, and above all, a mistaken view of how the world works.
To expose the forces that sustain voodoo science, Park examines the role of the media, the courts, bureaucrats and politicians, as well as the scientific community. Scientists argue that the cure is to raise general scientific literacy. But what exactly should a scientifically literate society know? Park argues that the public does not need a specific knowledge of science so much as a scientific world view--an understanding that we live in an orderly universe governed by natural laws that cannot be circumvented.
I aint blinking either, Mr. Newman
| Customer Rating:  | "Voodoo Science" is an excellent, fast-paced, easy-to-read and even entertaining book about pseudoscience. The book was so easy to read, that I finished it in a day! Frankly, it's one of the best books I've read. At the time of writing it, the author was the Washington DC representative of an important scientific organization, the American Physics Association. Sometimes, he sounds like a Washington insider, as when he casually mentions a classified meeting with president Bush Senior about the Strategic Defense Initiative, or equally casually retells anecdotes about various science advisors in the White House. Who knows, maybe Mr. Park *is* a Beltway insider? At the very least, he has personal experience of many, perhaps all, of the cases he mentions in the book.
Did I say that "Voodoo Science" was entertaining? I guess I should have said: Entertaining, up to a point. Actually, the book is deeply disturbing. It seems pseudoscience is given credibility on major US news networks, in large-circulation newspapers, and even in military circles, usually behind a "top secret" smokescreen. And please note that the book *doesn't* cover creationism, Intelligent Design and Reagan's court astrologer. Thus, the real situation is even worse!
The most well-known scandal covered by Park actually involves two real scientists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, the two chemists who claimed to have discovered "cold fusion". If true, humanity would have gotten access to almost unlimited amounts of free energy. It turned out that Pons and Fleischmann were wrong, and then attempted to cover their tracks. Park also mentions two amateurs who claim to have discovered free energy, James Patterson and Joe Newman. Both have been sympathetically covered by major news networks, and Newman even managed to promote his Energy Machine before a Senate committee in Washington DC. Unfortunately for him, his bluff was called by Senator John Glenn, the former astronaut. The book is worth reading simply for Park's description of the confrontation between Glenn and Newman. "I aint blinking either, Mr. Newman". Glenn sure wasn't.
As for Patterson, he claims to have invented a free energy source by placing beads in a kitchen sink, and then lead an electric current right through it. *This* was touted by ABC? He also claims that the beads can neutralize radioactivity. I'm not a physicist, but even I can sense *something* wrong about that statement. I mean, there's a reason why radioactive waste is stored underground in very deep shafts, LOL. I learned it in elementary school.
Park also covers the Roswell incident (he actually worked for the military in Roswell - is this guy for real?), alternative medicine, parapsychology, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the claim that power lines cause cancer in children, anti-gravity shields, and some kind of New Age aura therapy (the latter was exposed by a nine-year old girl working on a school science project!). There is also a chapter critical of the US space program. The chapter is interesting, and Park is probably right, but it feels out of place in a book about pseudoscience.
Park is honest enough to admit that even scientists can pass from foolishness to fraud. Indeed, the book covers both backyard quacks and respected scientists who go terribly wrong. Park is especially angry at Teller, the legendary "Father of the H-bomb". He also points out that science cannot (yet) explain all things. Park's point, however, is that the cure for all this is *more* science and *better* science, not crazy speculations about free energy, quantum healing, and what not.
Recommended. Once again: I read the entire book in just one day. Made me feel almost like Harriet Klausner! :-)
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Not All That Glitters Is Not Gold
| Customer Rating:  | Skepticism in science and business is a healthy attitude, to a certain extent. However, obviously, there are both healthy and unhealthy levels of skepticism.
A book whose central purpose is to put forward and support the proposition that a scientific and practical viewpoint, is a skeptical one, is certainly going to appeal to people who are aggravated about the lack of skepticism in society, in regard to various topics, especially in regard to businesses formed only to criminally bilk investors out of their hard earned money. This is where the idiotic and the criminal merge; the areas where we find variously unsupported and often unsupportable devices and "technologies" for sale and seeking "qualified" large-scale investors.
So, books promoting healthy skepticism are always of some value in society. My position is that in regard to new technologies, there is also a strong tendency in society for people to adopt a skeptical stance on all new technologies, unless or until those technologies are clearly and strongly supported by previous "established" scientific work, and have technological ancestors which stand as exemplars of how the new technology will operate, without any careful detailed investigation by the skeptic.
This means that when we have new technology that is actually good and true, we will tend to ignore it, if this new technology represents a major breakthrough, discontinuous from previous technology, or not readily linkable to previous established technology and inventions in use in society generally. So skeptics will tend to embody the negative and sometimes very unhealthy tendency of people to resist positive change in science and technology.
We see that all scientific breakthroughs encounter skepticism and sometimes bring forth intense persecution of the scientists or promoters, when in the testing and early discussion stages, either in scientific conferences or in the media. So any book which basically tells people that not all technological claims or invention claims are true and valid, and that not all business propositions have validity or basis in reality, primarily has only this value: to amplify and encourage higher and higher levels of skepticism in science and tech and business fields. This may be healthy in regard to many topics and claims, but clearly is not valid or helpful in all cases, especially when we can see that there is already a very high hurdle for new inventions and tech to overcome anyway; and some of these new inventions will be of great value, and these are only hurt by the intensification of the already very powerful forces of resistance to change and very well entrenched skepticism in the science, tech, and business fields.
There is a need for us to understand how we can be justified in our skepticism, when we are already skeptical; and also there is a need for us to understand how we may be unjustified in our skepticism, and how and why such decisions are to be made in regard to each question we are faced with, especially in areas of great concern to the progress of human civilization. I do not feel that a book designed only to bolster and reinforce skepticism will be of any lasting value, unless the flip side is also fully examined.
Examples abound in science and technological history of how well-entrenched skepticism was eventually overcome by the actual weight of evidence and proof; often such evidence and proof, even very well developed and supported, is very difficult to communicate effectively, in the face of massive institutionalized and sometimes co-opted skeptical forces. In fact, when an issue is of very great significance and when it may involve disruptive new technology, the business and investment arena is insanely difficult, because the new tech may face such hurdles as co-opted stock price manipulators working for well-established competitors who stand to lose everything if the new technology gains wide acceptance.
Note that voracious greed in capitalistic societies tends to force investors to seek only those companies which have exponentially zooming profit margins; loss of a fraction of this momentum over a quarter will lead to a crash as investors scramble for the exit; and this profit momentum must be very carefully and aggressively supported by all manner of vicious stock price manipulation, and supported by all the marshalled forces of advanced capitalist society, it stands to reason. No examples will be given here; but I think those who scan through this review will be able to imagine situations similar to those I am considering. |
A Crash Course in Pseudoscience
| Customer Rating: | In this day and age, with the media hardly taking the time to distinguish between what is fact and what is fiction, the line between pseudoscience and science can be hard for any one individual to determine on his own. In Robert Park's book, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, the author takes a look at certain junk sciences, especially those that have gotten a great deal of media attention, and points out their proponents' errors in thinking in order to help try to sort out the truth from the lies, the science from the pseudoscience. Park is a Professor of Physics at University of Maryland, as well as former chairman of the Department of Physics. He is also the director of the Washington Office of the American Physical Society. In his preface, Park writes, "As I sought to make the case for science, however, I kept bumping up against scientific ideas and claims that are totally, indisputably, extravagantly, wrong, but which nevertheless attract a large following of passionate, and sometimes powerful, proponents" (Park, viii). Throughout his book, Park takes a skeptical look at certain voodoo sciences of the last half-century, as well as their origins. His main thesis is that there is a great distinction between what is entertainment and what is news, what is science and what is junk, and the American news media need to start doing a better job of making these distinctions for themselves and for their audiences.
Park is extremely harsh on the American media and press, and rightly so, as he believes that they often promote pseudoscience by their coverage of certain stories. One such instance Park points out is a story run by CBS Evening News in January of 1984 in which CBS reported on Joe Newman and his Energy Machine. Joe Newman, a man from rural Mississippi, who did not have so much as a high school diploma, claimed that he had invented an Energy Machine that could "produce ten times the electrical energy it took to run it" (5). The CBS Evening News did not deny Newman's claim, nor did they take a skeptical look at his invention. Instead, they allowed Newman to announce to all of the viewers that he had created this incredible Energy Machine, and even had two other "experts" come on air to back up Newman's claims. CBS went as far as to describe Newman as "a brilliant self-educated inventor" (5). To Park, this is just one example of many in which the American media become the catalyst for voodoo science.
Another interesting part of the book comes when Park explains his own "encounter" with a flying saucer. Driving through New Mexico one night, he was caught off guard by the image of his headlight reflecting off of a telephone wire, and believed, for an instant, that he was seeing an alien spacecraft moving along side him at the same speed as his automobile. Though he was already a skeptic and scientifically knowledgeable when this event occurred in his life, he was still able to be fooled, writing "My cerebral cortex may have sneered at stories of flying saucers, but the part of my brain in which these stories were stored had been activated by the powerful impression of the meteorite" (174). It is extraordinarily interesting that even a skeptic and a scientist like Park can still have his mind play tricks on him, and that he can imagine to see what he deems impossible because of the great effect that pseudoscience has on all of us. It just seems to be further evidence that all of our brains are so consumed by the junk science that the media so often perpetuate, and it is nearly impossible for anyone to avoid or escape. As he writes in Voodoo Science, "Whenever I become impatient with the UFO believers, as I often do, I try to remember that night in New Mexico when for a few seconds, I believed in flying saucers" (174).
Park's narrative is a great book for anyone who would like an engaging read regarding junk science, its history, and the role the media play in its existence. It is written in the style of a series of vignettes, with each chapter's set all relating in some way to an overall topic; for instance, all of the vignettes in chapter one, "It's Not News It's Entertainment: In Which the Media Covers Voodoo Science", are classic stories in which the media perpetuated a story of pseudoscience. Park also uses each case of pseudoscience to lead into the next, comparing and contrasting the claims as he goes along, and weaves previous stories that he has talked about into later chapters, so that the book has a nice flow.
All in all, Voodoo Science is a veritable crash course in the popular topics of pseudoscience, from Cold Fusion to UFO sightings. Park covers all of the topics intelligently and to the fullest extent. However, Park has not written the book for the scientific world, but for anyone with an interest in these topics and in learning the truth of certain subjects, saying in the preface, "I will, of course, be delighted if scientists read my book and find it entertaining, but it wasn't written for them" (ix). Thus, the book is insightful without being overwhelming, and Park's skeptical take is often surprisingly humorous as he points out the flaws of certain pseudoscience. For those who might be wary to pick up a book shelved in the "Science" section of the bookstore for a recreational read, they should be pleasantly surprised at the ease and entertainment value of Voodoo Science. |
Decent, ultimately disappointing
| Customer Rating: | I enjoyed much of this book; Park does a good job of taking on the pseudoscientific types who need to be exposed. His take on them is devastating, and with this I have no quarrel.
But this is true only up to a point. He hurts his cause by his sneering attitude rather than by dispassionate dissection and he cites virtually no actual research to back his claims.
But the worst part of the book is his attack on the manned space program. Here we have a man who is so fully of himself that he sees fit to pontificate in the manner of yet another pseudoscience, "Futurism." He blathers about why certain things in manned space flight can never be, pretending that his speculative statements are already proven fact. He has, after all, no more knowledge of what mankind's technological levels and abilities will be in 100 years than does anyone else. For him to speak as if he does is dishonest.
In the end, I would recomment this book, but would caution the reader not to take as Gospel everything the man says. |
My favorite scientist
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Bob Park is my favorite scientist. This no-nonsense book cuts through the crap and gives you the facts. You'll be able to explain why popular nonsense like "space travel" is a waste of money.
While you're waiting for this wonderful, readable, funny, yet factual book to arrive, subscribe to Dr. Park's newsletter at http://www.bobpark.org/
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